


How Magic Works In Harry Potter

by DictionaryWrites



Category: Harry Potter - J. K. Rowling
Genre: Essays, Gen, Headcanon, Magic Meta, Meta, non-fiction, not fanfiction
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-05-12
Updated: 2016-05-12
Packaged: 2018-06-08 00:23:45
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 4,684
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/6831424
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/DictionaryWrites/pseuds/DictionaryWrites
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Some meta I wrote last year about how I write magic in the universe of Harry Potter. Not fanfic! Just all headcanon.</p>
            </blockquote>





	How Magic Works In Harry Potter

**Author's Note:**

  * Inspired by [My Original Post On Tumblr](https://archiveofourown.org/external_works/196516) by DictionaryWrites. 



So, in regards to the actual physics of magic and how magic works, I’ve got a particular theory I work with in all my fic, meta and roleplay.

Firstly, magic is an energy, but it’s something of an intangible substance that can be found virtually everywhere in the universe, running in particular channels and through certain circuits - the biggest movements of fluid, untapped magic happen to coincide with things like ley lines and so forth, as it’s easier to draw from in those areas.

In order for a person to manipulate magic, they have to have “channels” for the process within their own body, not completely dissimilar to veins of ore in rock. In order to manipulate the magic that can be found all around, one needs to have such veins in their own body, as they need to act as something like a conductor.

Magic in the air is almost completely malleable, and can be shaped or channelled into virtually anything, but one needs some way to control it - after all, just waving one’s hand aimlessly through the air doesn’t suddenly charm a rabbit into being.

In order to touch magic and suitably move to sculpt it, one needs veins and an access to one’s lifeforce, or soul - the soul acts as the link between raw magic and one’s ability to control it, and while magic certainly does not drain the soul in the long term, massive bursts of magic can drain one so much that comas or similar feats of exhaustion will be seen - even death.

It’s for this reason that magicks such as necromancy can damage the soul so much, as the tainted magic does regularly come into contact with one’s lifeforce and affects it thusly.

Now, this sort of fits in with the concept of Squibs and different levels of magical power - some people will have “wider” veins than others, allowing them to sculpt more magic in a shorter time, though perhaps will less finesse if they’re not practised enough. I’m guessing this idea of magic capability would be decided much like height in regards to genes - it will be numerous different ones affecting their presence and thickness.

Now, Squibs may have no “veins” or they may just have “veins” so very thin it’s virtually impossible for any magic to pass through, thus why programs like the one Filch was in are allowed to be sold as having some potential to work. In regards to seeing magical objects and magical creatures, this concept of almost closed “veins” would explain why Squibs can see magical stuff - the magic can pass through them, make tiny contact, but they couldn’t hope to control it or touch it themselves.

And it’s at this point that I match things in particularly with the Harry Potter universe - and in regards to conspiracy. If magic is a completely constant element found everywhere, then it will be possible for anyone with the suitable capability to manipulate it.

However, while magic is a very malleable and mutable substance, it also takes skill to open one’s “veins” to it, as one is effectively putting forth one’s very being and using it to manipulate little bits of the universe to one’s liking.

Now, this idea of magic being a constantly present flow of energy through the universe fits into the fact that Astronomy is a compulsory subject at Hogwarts. It’s never really explained what Astronomy is for - one sees that it’s a necessary subject, and one sees how each student studies the stars, the planets and the various moons of each planet.

Given that Harry Potter is in the 90s, the Wizarding World seems to have far more information about local planetary movements and such than Muggle scientists at the time. I think we can quite safely put this down to uses of magical telescopes and such, especially given that magical society seems to place a very heavy importance upon creating instruments that display everything from the stars currently in the sky to the phases of the moon - even magical watches display stars and planets on them.

Astronomical movements are obviously very very important in the Wizarding World, but my wonder is on the why, and I think I know how I can calculate the why where my magical theory is concerned.

If magic is a constantly moving and flowing energy that’s been utilized time and time again over a long period, with certain natural tendencies (to flow over ley lines, to allow itself into magical veins, etc.), then one could also assume that the flow of magic is influenced by planetary and galactical movements too.

In the same way that the movement of our Luna and the turn of the Earth affects tides, in the same way the Sun and planets can create eclipses, change the ceilings and so on, I should think these movements affect magical flow as well.

For example, a planetary alignment may lead to magic being made to flow on a massive scale to draw more power in from the rest of the universe, and I think this may be very important in terms of “classical” magicks - rituals and the like.

I do think ritual magic will performed in a completely different fashion to standard magic performed with a wand, however - as I later discuss in my section about enchantment in terms of how runes affect magic to flow like a circuit - I should think ritual magicks will probably involve creating magical lines that constantly draw in magic or affect it to do things that require far more power or something similar.

Our Trio kids may not have done any sort of ritual magic bar what Harry’s been involved in unwillingly, but I imagine these phases and flows of power affect magical institutions and so forth as well - for example, it’s said that the staircases at Hogwarts move at random, but given that they’re not sentient it may be that they simply parallel certain movements in the wider universe, and it may well be that items and artefacts in the Ministry (and, for that matter, numerous ancient instruments) may well run to parallel these outer movements too.

Blood purity has already been academically discussed in regards to theoretical genetics - if I recall, it was someone from the Harry Potter course at Durham university, but I’m not sure and I don’t care to look it up.

With this process, it’s a little different - I think that there’s a theory that purer blood leads to more magic. Now, to an extent that makes sense; if you breed together two wizards and witches that have particularly “wide veins” or “durable” lifeforces, then they’re going to be far better suited to performing more powerful magic.

But, a bit like how my cocker spaniel looks glorious but will walk into walls, inbreeding can somehow lead to cosmetic results but not good physical ones. Inbreeding will lead to defects and issues, which is where Purebloods fall down.

There’s definitely something to be said for blood in general, though; we see Lily’s sacrificial protection work on Harry, and I believe that’s in her blood. I imagine blood can be charmed and enchanted, and particular things that are absorbed may even be passed on via blood (in a HIV way or in a parental way; it depends.)

I think blood may also follow some particular rules, magic-wise - charms can certainly be set up, I imagine, to recognize particular familial genes, but I think this also sort of could focus on ideas of Pureblood.

I imagine someone just thought “only Purebloods” when they set up the original charms, but wards that don’t allow Muggleborns and Halfbloods through might be able to trace bloodlines. Now, this interests me, ‘cause familial lines seem to hold a lot of importance in the magical world as well as the supposed purity of blood.

Now, there are two ways the magic thing is gonna test for purity - either it can test magical records (I mean automatically recorded ones, not potentially inaccurate handwritten ones) or it looks for specific markers in blood that signify purebloodedness, which I doubt. The thing that I wonder about is whether those wards also contain an element that tests for active magic veins - 'cause like, I’m guessing most Squibs aren’t allowed anything?

But yeah, God. Blood-centred wards do interest me, and I think there’s a lot of potential for the way they might be made and developed.

Wands come into this stuff as well: a wand, with its magical core and very tapered edge, will allow someone to far more easily channel magic, and find it far easier to point that magic in a particular direction. It’s also why certain wands work better for certain people - particular cores might link in with the magicks their souls are best suited to, and they want the “channel” within the wand to link up to their own channels, a bit like how you want two linked pieces of pipe to be the same size and width.

Spells, in this fashion, are almost like shortcuts - they’re carefully made things with particular incantations and wand movements, and the magic that’s already been trained to react in a certain way to that spell will act accordingly. It’s why Greek and Latin spells are so common - while I imagine an English or French incantation would work, for example, these Ancient tongues have far more ingrained tracks, so they’ll be easier to perform.

Non-verbal, wandless magic will take a lot more skill and practice, but at that point you’re actually manipulating magic in its raw form, without using a premade “shortcut” or a channel.  
It’s sort of for that reason that in my theory wands, staves and other things to channel magic are more a hindrance than a help: although they certainly lead to far easier learning of the fundamentals of practical magic, later in life if you’re used to relying on a wand, it’s far more difficult to learn to do magic sans wand or word.

It’s for this reason that I think the idea of “winning” over someone’s wand is too much fairytale poppycock to actually be applied - I think it was an idea JK added too late and with not enough detail to comprehensibly be incorporated into the world.

However, if wands were actually designed with this concept in mind - for example, if in the past wandmakers were the deciders of who had won a duel, and they needed some sort of “sensor” in the wand, then I can completely understand where this “loyalty” centres in. A wand, upon being won, would change its “allegiance” by altering its channels to be as compatible as possible with its new master - I should imagine some cores and woods allow for more change than others, and thus some wands are more likely to be compatible with a completely different master once won.

Also, I think I should note that although Ollivander’s only uses Phoenix Feather, Unicorn Hair and Dragon Heartstring, there are dozens of other wand cores, and I do have a vague idea that in the past a lot of discrimination might have been based on what sort of wand someone worked best with.

For example, Voldemort’s wand is made of yew, and apparently yew wands have a reputation for being particularly deadly in duels and battles and such - wands, as a whole, are perhaps too quickly moved to be the source of too much favouritism and such, but I feel like older wizards would totally judge people based on their wands and what field of magic those wands point to proficiency in.  
That might be the reason everyone finds Ollivander to be so creepy, to be honest - as a wandmaker, I imagine he’s gotten very used to viewing all magic as “great” in terms of wand usage rather than considering any moral basis on magicks.

Now, in regards to stuff like charms, one is basically telling magic to act in a certain way and it obeys. Now, for little stuff like hexes it’s quite simple - you’re throwing the magic with the instruction that when it hits skin, it’s going to create boils and then fade. I imagine making spells is almost like programming a piece of computer code.

That’s all well and good, but for long standing enchantments like the protective spells at Hogwarts, one’s going to need magic that’s constantly replenishing itself. Here I see Ancient Runes as working not dissimilarly to individual items in a circuit; you’re going to write out the runes to perform certain things (drawing in magic, a protective spell, etc.) and then set them out in the correct order.

Like with circuitry, more complex enchantments are going to take longer and be more difficult to set out, and you’re going to need suitable space to lay out your “board”.

This is sort of why I think Muggle technology and magic refuse to coincide - magic is a sort of malleable energy moving everywhere, so of course it’s going to disrupt the flow of electrons in an electric circuit. If someone sat down with knowledge of both physics and how magic works, then I bet they could do it, but wizards don’t do that shit - Muggles are stupid, and it’s illegal to boot. Plus, given the lack of proper scientific method we see in the universe, I bet no one has even put that much thought into how magic works itself - people know rules, like Gamp’s laws, but they don’t know why or how things work in certain ways.

But yeah, that’s how I think magic works.

Now, in regards to some things I think there are particular ways magic needs to function. I don’t believe magic is capable of animation - that is to say, creating a sentient life simply with the right spell, and I do believe reanimation would be very difficult indeed.

That is to say, I think individual lifeforces are something very very unique, and those of sentient beings (for the purposes of this meta that mostly refers to humans, but it applies to centaurs, goblins, etc. too) can’t just be created on a whim.

But the thing is, there are tons of artificial beings that act of their own accord and do all manner of things in Harry Potter - look at the Sorting Hat, look at the portraits, or even the Room of Requirement, which appears to have some sort of intelligence.

For some of this stuff I think it’s a bit like making a computer program capable of learning on its own - that’s what I think it is with the Sorting Hat. It has its own personality, but it’s made for particular purposes, and while it has certain intelligence, its loyalty is tied to the charms of the school itself.

I imagine its intelligence and sentience would be quite limited, if tested.

But magical portraiture is something very different - firstly, there appears to be a difference between magical photography and magical portraiture, as photographs appear to just act like GIFs - they’re animated, and they might perform small actions, but they don’t possess awareness.

Portraits, on the other hand, are intelligent, clever, self-aware and seemingly sentient themselves. I have a theory that lifeforce, upon a person’s death, can be preserved, and that a segment of it, or more accurately an imprint of it, can then be incorporated into a portrait.

The person still gets an after life, but a “ghost” of their life force inhabits the portrait - it would explain why you can only have one “live” portrait at a time, like how Phineas Black has two portraits, but can only be “alive” in one of them at once.

I’ve not given much thought to the process - I imagine there’s a lot of enchanted ink and so forth, as well as the enchantments on the portrait - but the point is undoubtedly to ensure knowledge is preserved through the years.

This isn’t a creation of sentient life, however - I think it’s more like capturing a mirror image of a sentient life in the portrait, in a far purer way than capturing a segment of soul in a Horcrux would be, for example.

I think this sort of leftover “life mist” might be able to be applied to other things though - specifically what I’ve got in mind is Lily’s sacrificial protection, which I mentioned before. Dumbledore said it was just love, and I don’t know that I trust that completely, but if Lily left behind a “mist” of her soul specifically for the purpose of protecting her son, it might quite do the job.

Potions are going to be a slightly different kettle of fish; magic as a constantly present element is going to affect certain things more than others.

For example, I imagine that places like Godric’s Hollow are going to have higher percentages of Muggleborns amongst the population, as people will mutate to have magical “veins” in the same way nuclear energy effected mutants to have genes that gave them x-abilities.

Magic is going to affect other stuff, though - like the evolution of other species and “magical” draw-offs from the original, and also plants. I expect that a lot of magical plants somehow channel magic or feed off of other magical items. It might also be that they channel or drawn in particular magical components for potions - the rest, however, I think is just basic chemistry but with the addition of magical elements.

I actually find this quite an interesting idea - it adds more to Snape’s poetry experimentation, as some of the stuff is simply efficiency as opposed to affecting the actual chemistry of the potion itself.  
For example, when he advised crushing a bean as opposed to cutting it - if items with magic properties are merely chemically active in the same way anything is, it’s quite understandable that crushing it to draw out juices will be easier than cutting it. In a similar way, ingredients which are magically active in a particular way (for example, vines that are conscious, or a beetle that senses a particular emotion) would be affected by a particular preparation method.

One could really only find out why and whether that’s the case via more scientific experimentation, which does not seem to be the wizarding style except for outcasts like the young Mrs Lovegood, Severus Snape and, arguably, Unspeakables.

Now, impressive though the concept of magic is, it’s definitely going to have limits. The primary one of this is that you cannot create sentient life.

I firmly believe you can create artificial intelligences or magical items capable of learning in the same way we can with computers, but I don’t think magic can create sentient life in something that is not sentient - this doesn’t, however, necessarily apply to the transfer of souls, but I’ll get onto that in a moment.

You can’t transfigure a rabbit into a person. It might look like a person, but it’s not going to act like one and it’s going to lack the intelligence to learn to interact with its new body. It would probably be very upset, so don’t do that to the poor rabbit.

Here, however, I also have Gamp’s Laws Of Elemental Transfiguration.

There’s only one that’s laid out canonically; you cannot conjure food. You can summon it from somewhere or replicate it if you already have it, but you can’t conjure food. This, and I’ll be blunt here, makes no sense.

If I can conjure a rabbit that’s alive and breathing, I should be able to conjure one that’s already cooked and ready to eat. But I’ve got a theory as to this too - my idea of Gamp’s Laws of Elemental

Transfiguration go as so:

  * Magic is constant and mutable, and can be transfigured at will into any and all things the wizard desires, but for five exceptions:
  * One cannot create food (one can draw it from an existing place or replicate food in existence, but one cannot conjure new food sources from nowhere.)
  * One cannot produce life that is sentient.
  * One cannot conjure new gold into being (thus why alchemy is still so impossible and difficult to perform today).
  * One cannot create magically powerful objects (for example, one cannot produce a broomstick ready to be used as a broom. One would have to conjure a regular broom and enchant it afterwards.)
  * One cannot conjure wishes (that is to say, one must know what one is attempting to conjure to conjure it at all. One cannot conjure “something that will work for this problem”).



I only think half of these are right; making sentient life isn’t possible, because a lifeforce or soul is a different thing to a magical substance, and if we see how magic has been approached before it makes sense you can’t conjure wishes. When Harry’s class is studying how to transfigure stuff, they’re told to focus on their goal’s being and so forth, 'cause you’re shaping the magic to form that shape.

Now, the food thing makes no sense, and I’m not sure the gold does either - I think that these two are more rules for spell-making than for the possibility of magic itself. If everyone could suddenly conjure Galleons and food, the economy would collapse. It’s not a conspiracy,

I don’t think, so much as it’s something people adopted but forgot the reason why for - a bit like the use of wands and staves in the every day rather than just when you need an extra boost for a project.

Ah, the Voldebaby.

A perfect example of why not to fuck around with necromancy and the concept of eternal life - another example of a cautionary tale is The Warlock’s Hairy Heart, in the Tales of Beedle The Bard.

Now, this concept of soul corruption is what happens when one splits one’s soul to retain immortality, but also I think if you kill people - I think the reason killing people (as a magical person) affects the soul to split is because the other’s lifeforce could potentially travel through the veins you have for magic, in the same way your own soul does for you to affect magic.

And I think touching other people’s lifeforces could fuck you the fuck up, to be frank.

Also, magic can be very difficult to control, and I think that’s why they go through seven years of schooling - plus, given that some people’s “veins” will be tended to particular magicks, there might be extra problems.

Like how Seamus Finnegan always blows shit up - that’s because he tends towards explosions naturally, in the same way some people are better at charms, transfiguration, etc.

I also think that magic might be able to act on its own to affect stuff, even though someone may not be directly controlling it - while I doubt people have the power to create life, I think that magic running in enough concentration in a certain place could affect an object or objects with something of a consciousness, even if it was a very simple one - like how the Weasleys’ Ford Anglia becomes almost like some sort of car-shaped dog after time alone in the Forbidden Forest.

It’s here that I think the “intention” of magic becomes quite important as well - magic obviously either has its own rules, or magical society over time has developed particular rules and magic has morphed to enforce them accordingly. It could be either - historical guessing isn’t so much my expertise, aha - but either way magic forces some things.

So, killing someone - the act of taking another life, anyway - splits one’s soul. It doesn’t seem to matter if this person is magical or not (though I should like to wonder if it applies to non-humans who are still sentient), and so there’s something that affects magic to act destructively in regards to this. Similarly, life debts seem to enforce themselves in certain circumstances - like when Peter Pettigrew’s charmed on prosthesis took offence to his disloyalty.

Magic seems to work quite cleanly with some rules - the same for ideas of love and sacrifice, as well in regards to one’s reflection in a Patronus charm - and it’s here that the Dark Arts and other forms of magic become quite important in opposition to each other.

There seems to be a natural ambience lended to dark magic, and I imagine that’s to do with the “pathways” created by spells I discussed earlier - I definitely think that magic, as an energy, can pick up stuff along the way, whether it’s intention or whether it’s that soul-destroying (literally) tendency of offensive (I mean morally offensive more than literally, in this case) magic.

We see this in some spots - like how the lights often dim or go out in response to dark magicks. I think this is most certainly a sub reaction rather than something programmed into the spell itself, and I think it is to do with this distinguishing factor between dark magicks and others.

I’m not quite sure as to the specifics - it might be to do with any sort of taint on the energy, pushing it to go one way rather than another (in the same way one might corrupt a water source with poisons) and then allowing that taint to spread. It’s why I believe some dark magicks are less controllable and why they often involve heavier bursts of magic - like Fiendfyre, for example, which just consumes and consumes.

Be careful where you stick those wands, you know?

Now, this is a pretty long piece of meta, and I’ve done my level best to ensure it’s encompassing in some areas (more for my own particularity than for info, I must admit, aha) but there’s a lot of stuff it’s missing.

For example, this meta is deliberately written to apply to Western magic - so, that’ll be the Celtic magic that I should imagine developed via druidic sects and other forms of magic within Welsh, Scottish, English and Irish roots. Then there’ll be the Ancient stuff from Roman and Greek influences which would have spread West to the UK, and then to America.

But the thing is, while I imagine Western wizards linked into imperialism and colonization too in the past few years, other forms of magic outside of the occident (by which I more specifically mean Western Europe including the UK but not necessarily Iceland, Canada and North America) might be completely different!

It’s my theory that wands became common practice as being easier to use when learning magic, and subsequently became constant, but that’s not necessarily the case in other parts of the world.

Across the other continents - South America, Africa, Australia and Asia - I’m guessing this concept of wands and staves isn’t everywhere.

I definitely think there’ll still be wand usage - in the same way cell phones are all over because of their convenience, I imagine wands will be too - but I bet at school some may teach wandless magic first, or others may teach pure theory, or others might teach forms of collective magic!

And this is the important thing, I guess - I mean, maybe it’s wishful thinking on my part to hope that imperialism is less of a constant evil in the wizarding world, but the vibrancy of the magical world is only added to when one considers how magic is approached in other cultures, and the different way it may be approached also.

I think it’d also be cool to see what sort of family magic is passed down, and now that differs between different magical families - for example, I imagine that Draco Malfoy received tutelage from his father in offensive hexes and spells, but that the Weasleys were all instructed in cleaning and cooking charms. I think that’ll be down to familial preference - where Lucius’ priorities would be in ensuring his child knows how to duel, Molly and Arthur’s would be in ensuring their children can be self-sufficient.

But beyond that, I’d love to see different influences in different families, and see them being shared in the classroom and in the corridors - all around the world there might be different moral views in regards to certain spells or forms of magic.


End file.
